BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES WORKSHOP: Max H. Bazerman (Harvard Business School), “Bounded Ethicality: Improving Ethics from a Behavioral Decision Research Perspective”

Most of the scandals we have observed could not have happened without basically good people doing bad things without their own awareness. My colleagues and I argue that the majority of unethical events occur as the result of ordinary and predictable psychological processes. This talk will outline the bounded ethicality perspective and conclude with an overview of how the bounded ethicality perspective provides other hints for maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain.

Max H. Bazerman is the author, co-author, or co-editor of twenty books (including The Power of Noticing, Simon and Schuster, 2014 and Blind Spots [with Ann Tenbrunsel], Princeton University Press, 2011) and over 200 research articles and chapters. His awards include an honorary doctorate from the University of London (London Business School), Aspen’s Lifetime Achievement award, both the Distinguished Educator Award and the Distinguished Scholar Award from the Academy of Management, and was also named as a Daily Kos’ Hero for going public about how the Bush Administration corrupted the 2005 RICO Tobacco trial.. Max’s external work involves teaching and consulting in 30 countries. His former doctoral students have accepted positions at leading business schools throughout the United States, including the Kellogg School at Northwestern, the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, the Fuqua School at Duke, the Johnson School at Cornell, Berkeley, Stanford University, the University of Chicago, Notre Dame, Columbia, and the Harvard Business School.

This workshop is held jointly between the Yale departments of Economics, Political Science, Psychology, and the Yale School of Management.